The story of my sixth grade trauma . . . set to music.

Here's the story of how I broke my wrist in sixth grade set to music far too good to be used for such stupid purposes. Check it out!

Memorial Day Weekend! Now With More Crazy Family!

Ah, Memorial Day weekend! That awkward mini break that my friends in Fairfax County Public Schools only get if there hasn’t been too much snow that year, and officially signifies the end of students caring about school. I don’t even know why we have classes until mid-June.

My extended family likes to celebrate Memorial Day with a big barbecue on our ancestral holdings in PA. There’ll be me and my family, my grandmother, great grandmother, my mom’s brother’s kids, great aunts and uncles, my cousin and her husband, and representatives from all the major purse dog species. We cook more food than we can eat and everyone still brings a dish to the gathering. I’m pretty sure that my Aunt Sally and Uncle Joe get the majority of their groceries via hosting potlucks.

Per my sister’s request, Mom made pasta salad. Per my great grandmother’s request, my grandmother made her famous pork barbecue. Not only are the women in my family long-lived—we’ve also got pretty strong teeth (*most of us*). We locked my crazy dog up at my grandmother’s house so she couldn’t beat up the purse dogs (just kidding, the purse dogs bite her legs and drive her crazy).

Joe said the barbecue would start at three, but that family members could come earlier, so we showed up at . . . noon. My cousin Sam was baking cookies and watching Arrested Development, which is a TV show some people care about. I don’t put much stock in her personal taste, because she doesn’t watch Game of Thrones. And this is a woman married to a man who we caught reading a Warhammer 40,000 novelization called Space Wolf. Get with the program, people! How am I supposed to have intelligent adult conversations if I can’t toss out a Game of Thrones reference every five minutes?

Can I sic your dragons on them, my queen?

A Yorkie and something called a Morkie (a curly haired yorkie) have locked jaws and are tumbling around on the floor like two crocodiles competing for a mate. Sally pops in and tells us that the eight packages of spicy Italian sausages aren’t gonna cut it.  Joe says he’ll drive down to the store and get more. “You want to drive the convertible, Liz?”

My heart stops. My father also has a BMW Z4. The ‘4’ key on my keyboard also produces the ‘$’ character, which probably isn’t a coincidence. My father has never let me near his precious, precious car. Granted, I don’t know how to drive a stick shift. But still.

“Really?” I say.

“Yeah, really.”

So that’s how I found myself sitting behind the wheel of the most expensive car I’d ever seen, wincing as I put my foot on the gas. “Give it a little more juice,” Joe says, and I push my foot down another fraction of a degree. We inch towards the grocery store at thirty five miles per hour, with Joe continuously reminding me to not slam my foot on the brakes before going around curves. Apparently, going around curves quickly is what sports cars are built for.

Our sausages procured, Joe drove us back to his house in a third of the time it took me to drive to the store. He quickly accelerated to sixty miles per hour and back down again, whipping around corners at forty five, continuously proving I drive like a wimp. No wonder my father won’t let me drive his sports car.

When we got back, Sam was rolling chunks of cookie dough into disks. Not seeing the point in the intermediate oven step, I swiped one of the disks and set out to find an empty place in the house to eat it. That empty place happened to be right by the front door. There I sat, chewing on my little ball of egg, sugar, and chocolate until the worst came to pass—I saw my mother pull up.

I heard her walking up the path, pushing my elderly great grandmother in a wheelchair, and did something I’m not proud of—slipping the cookie dough into my pocket and running into the next room. Then I realized the first place they’d bring my great grandmother was that room and my mom would ask me why I was running away. So I dashed out into the kitchen, where Sally and Sam were cooking, and I ducked down the basement stairs.

Now, it was pretty dark in the basement, and I didn’t want to go all the way down the steps, since I couldn’t see. But I didn’t want to draw attention by turning on the lights, so I just crouched down at the top of the steps and munched on my lump of cookie dough until it was done, at which point I came out and greeted my mother and great grandmother.

My mom’s brother, Dave, and his wife, Patrice, showed up with their two kids in tow, the youngest of whom is still a baby and seems to believe that the best game in the world is dropping things on the floor and making me pick them up. For some reason, all babies play this game. It’s encoded in their DNA.

My father had a lot to talk to Dave about, on the difficulties of raising young children. “You’ve got to watch out for those late afternoon naps,” he said sagely, as someone’s toy poodle rammed its head into the baby’s chest. Cue laughing baby. “You put them down in the crib and you have a few beers, and you’re drinking, and eventually you’ve had two or three, and your kid wakes up and starts crying . . .”

“Actually, I haven’t been drinking much since they were born,” Dave says, shooting my father an odd look.

Meanwhile, the two toy poodles are running in and out of the house, the Yorkie and Morkie on their heels, Occasionally, they jump on top of each other and spar for food like something from The Hunger Games. A gigantic dog with crazy eyes joins them and they crash around together, narrowly avoiding my great grandmother, who is eating her second meat sandwich.

Dad tries to get Molly to eat some of Sam’s handmade strawberry rhubarb pie by putting it on a fork and holding it up to her mouth, like how Dave tries to feed his infant. Only Molly isn’t fooled by airplane noises. “What’s a rhubarb?” she asks.

“A type of fruit!” Dad says, but Molly isn’t buying it. So my father spends three minutes of his precious, irreplaceable life trying to convince a thirteen year old girl to eat a piece of pie. And as Sam’s husband quickly informs him, a rhubarb is a nasty vegetable that looks like red celery, and if he saw it on the side of the road, he wouldn’t eat it.

Yum!

The evening ended up like most of these things do: with me in the kitchen, talking to Joe and Sally, until someone point out that my parents have already left, and thus I mutter a curse word and run for the door. 

Liz's ideas for last minute Christmas gifts

We've all been there, right? Christmas eve and you still don't have presents for that special someone--like your mom, dad, sister, brother, inlaws, friends, stepfamilly, pets, or all of the above. Thankfully, there's some handy solutions to that problem.

Besides reducing your shopping list by force

First of all, try the local frozen yogurt place. There's about fifty different franchises to choose from: Pinkberry, Sweetfrog, Yogenfruitz, Umlautfruitz, ADHDfrog, Cocaine, Berryyogurt, Yogurtyogurt . . . but most of them sell yogurt priced by the ounce. Don't bother getting the actual yogurt, though. Fill your cup up with whipped cream. It's light and cheap and makes a great present for kids from age 2-8.  Bonus tip: scoop the whipped cream on top of a cup of coffee, give it to a teenage girl, and tell her it's Starbucks. Basically, there's no real difference.

If that doesn't work out, try Your Neighbor's Backyard. There's all kinds of good stuff there and most of it is free. Sticks, rocks, and Your Neighbor's cat might not seem like they work well together, but try tying them all together with string. At best, you've got a living, breathing work of art that's sure to impress your fancy mother-in-law. If not, you've got one more cat to give Crazy Aunt Bertha. Also, any toddler in your family will enjoy sucking on the rock.

What about stocking stuffers? Easy! Almost every restaurant fancy enough to offer 'hors d'ovueres' instead of 'appetizers' has a bowl of mints near the hostess stand. It's a bit tricky to figure out how many you can swipe before they throw you out--trial and error will serve thee well. If the maiter'd (look, I suck at French) grabs your collar and tries to haul you out a window, remind him that it's almost Christmas. Santa is watching. I think they have Santa in France. Santa only works one day a year, too.

There's the mall, but it's expensive and crowded.

Gift cards are the perfect solution for your holiday woe. Just grab a piece of paper, write 'Merry X-mas' (because 'Christmas' takes a long time to write, and you've got a bunch of people to give to), stuff it in an envelope, and give them out Christmas morning. It's a gift! It's a card! It's a (wait for it) gift card! Whoever made this a socially acceptable gift has my eternal gratitude

If you want to get fancy (like, say, a gift for your boss), there's no avoiding it: you'll have to go to the grocery store. Stuff here costs money, but has the advantage of being both delicious and coming in all kinds of cool packages. If you've got cool colored duct tape and a few bags of Doritos, you have all the ingredients you need for an awesome your boss can eat! But why stop at packaged food? A tomato is the perfect gift for that special man/woman/cat in your life. It's round, like eternity (apparently, eternity is really really fat). It's red, like a heart (especially when it's been freshly plucked from a human chest). Put it together and you'll see that a tomato is a symbol of eternal love. Also, if you stick it under your shirt, it's pretty easy to shoplift.

If you've got to get a gift for someone you don't really like, try giving some money to a charity in their name. When they ask you what you got them for Christmas, inform them that curing Kim Kardashian's hangnail is way more important than their crass commercialism. While they're stunned by your impeccable logic, steal their purse.

See? Kim needs you.

If all else fails, don't forget: Christmas is magic! Santa's coming to your house tonight and he's bringing the present you want most--those other presents you forgot to buy for your family and friends. So go to sleep and forget all your worries. Santa will save you. Right? Right!

Merry Christmas!